Great Characters Go Faster Deeper Harder
This from a guy whose first book had a tied-up woman on the cover. I should know, right? (See my books page if you’re curious… and I bet you are.) Actually, that cover — not my idea — has caused me as many headaches as it has book sales. But that’s another blog. Most of […]
Fatal Distractions: Six Things That Will Tank Your Story Every Time
The oldest and perhaps best morsel of writing advice ever is to read. You can’t play tennis having never seen the game (not so with golf; you can watch it until your eyeballs bleed and you’ll still suck) and you can’t write publishable fiction until you’ve absorbed enough storytelling to intuitively recognize what works. Trouble […]
Writing Better Fiction: Inside the Six Core Competencies
You’ve heard a lot of people in your life say something like, “I’d like to write a novel someday.” Or a screenplay, perhaps. Or some variation thereof. And if you’re already a writer yourself — definition of a writer: someone who actually writes — you may have thought at the time, good luck with that, […]
Drumroll… Introducing The Six Core Competencies of Successful Storytelling
Okay, maybe not so much with the drumroll… there are thousands of writers from workshops I’ve taught around the country who have heard me stump this speech like an evangelist. There’s really nothing new under the sun when it comes to writing, it is what it is. But there are a multitude of ways to […]
Better Writing by Studying the W.I.P. of Others
W.I.P. — Works In Progress If the name of this site sounds remotely familiar — I’m not kidding myself, I’d be pleasantly surprised if it does — that’s because Storyfix.com used to be about pitching my story coaching and consultation service (still available here, by the way). Over the course of three years I had […]
Why Stephen King Is Full of Sh*t
Oh, the horror! This mid-list hack is calling out the master of the writing universe. Well, this mid-list hack can tell you precisely why Stephen King is full of shit, at least on one count. In his memoir On Writing, King tells us how we should write our stories. Because that’s how he writes them: […]